21 December 2007

The first (and last) time I ever heard of “Funny or Die” was probably the same time everyone else did. Funny or Die was the random website that hosted that clever Will Ferrel vs. Pearl, the little girl landlord, video a few months back.

Well, apparently Funny or Die has a staff of 30! and they've somehow just secured another $15 million! from their “venture capital benefactors” to put towards the site.

But, has anyone EVER watchedanything else on that site besides for that one little girl vs. Will Ferrell video?!?!

$15 MILLION?!

A staff of 30?!?

Venture Capital?!

Apparently, the site will use the funds to hire “creative and engineering talent”. Also in the works is a revenue sharing scheme to compensate content contributors.

Um...

So they're going to use the fresh $15 million to hire people. So then what exactly do the 30 staffers who currently work there do?

I thought that whole “dot com” boom was over...

I guess Funny or Die is being touted as the “first successful collaboration between Hollywood and Silicon Valley”; the first time top-tier Hollywood talent has been paired with comparable engineering know-how (apparently, the site now loads as fast as YouTube) and shrewd investment muscle with Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia Capital has provided venture capital for Apple, Electronic Arts, Google, PayPal, Yahoo and YouTube just to name a few.

Sequoia was one of the first investors in Cisco Systems and Oracle. Around 10% of the value of NASDAQ is made up of firms funded by Sequoia.

When Google agreed to buy YouTube for $1.65B it is believed that Sequoia's original $11M investment translated to 30% of the ownership.

And apparently, as we slept, “The Landlord” became the third-most-watched video ever posted on the web. The reigning champ is still the insufferable “Evolution of Dance” video by motivational speaker/comedian Jud Laipply.

“Evolution of Dance” is the #1 Most Viewed Video Of All Time and #1 All Time Most Favourited Video on YouTube. That rounds out to about 66 million total views.

What about that Techno Viking guy? How's he doing? Who knew this shit was so carefully ranked!